Special issue: Photofeature : 1975 Worlds Apart 2010

Thirty-five years ago, the nation's lights went out. On June 25, 1975, an Emergency was declared, the Opposition imprisoned and democracy abandoned in order to preserve Indira Gandhi in power. But the trauma also taught India the value of its hard-won freedom and the necessity of protecting i

Thirty-five years ago, the nation's lights went out. On June 25, 1975, an Emergency was declared, the Opposition imprisoned and democracy abandoned in order to preserve Indira Gandhi in power. But the trauma also taught India the value of its hard-won freedom and the necessity of protecting its liberty. The return of democracy in 1977 surprised those who had fought for it: in 1980, Indira Gandhi was re-elected.

But a new crisis was waiting for her. A bitter and bloody insurgency in Punjab climaxed in Operation Bluestar with an assault on the Golden Temple followed by Indira Gandhi's martyrdom and brutal anti-Sikh riots. Her heir Rajiv Gandhi promised a new India with powerbrokers removed from the nation's nightmares. That hope was soon sullied by the mud of corruption symbolised by the Bofors controversy. A separate adventure in Sri Lanka led to Rajiv Gandhi's tragic assassination during the election campaign of 1991.

But the vision of modernising India retained its momentum. Liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation became buzzwords in 1991 as Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao and Finance Minister Manmohan Singh ushered in economic reforms. A second tragedy was, however, gathering force. Political turbulence and Delhi's indifference led to the destruction of the Babri Mosque, the site on which a temple for Lord Ram had been promised. A trail of blood emanated which continued until Godhra in 2002. Remarkably, India's economic growth bypassed the civic turmoil. In 2007, the bse Sensex reached the Himalayan 20,000-mark for the first time.

Today's India has richlists above a mass of poverty; but a sense of achievement and aspiration has become the hallmark of an emerging nation, whether it's business entrepreneurship or sportswomen winning gold medals. India has arrived and is heading towards the tryst with destiny promised by Jawaharlal Nehru.

The Ride to Power

Indira Gandhi in Belchi

For an out-of-power Indira Gandhi, an elephant ride in 1977 kickstarted her mission to recapture the throne in Delhi. Many wondered: "Why an elephant?" But the former prime minister did not have much choice as there was no motorable road to Belchi in Bihar, where she went to console the survivors of a massacre. More than 20 Dalits were burned to death by the Ranveer Sena, an upper caste militant group. After three decades, her grandson Rahul Gandhi travelled to the interiors of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar to revive the fortunes of the Congress. The 'Gungi Gudiya', as Ram Manohar Lohia called Indira, roared her way back to power but what will be Rahul's answer to Sharad Yadav who wants to "throw him into the Ganga"?

The Other Parivar

Rahul with Priyanka Gandhi and Robert Vadra during a roadshow in Amethi

"When Gandhiji was arrested just before the 1942 Satyagraha, Mirabehn (Margaret Slade) remarked: 'At the dead of night, like thieves they came to steal him away.' Jayaprakash Narayan, the Mahatma Gandhi of today's India, was whisked away in an identical manner, with one difference. The British Government never sought to prevent people from knowing that their beloved leader had been arrested. Under Indira Gandhi's rule, J.P. and Morarji, Charan Singh and Vajpayee have just ceased to be. It is only under a Hitler or a Stalin that such stupidity can even be conceived of."

L.K. Advani, from a pamphlet written in Bangalore Central Jail for the anti-Emergency movement's underground activists in 1975

"On the day I quit my office as Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, a New Delhi daily headlined that morning's news; Rathyatri to step down from his rath today. My reaction was: Literally, my Rathyatra may have commenced at Somnath only in 1990 and that ended at Samastipur about a month later. But my real yatra, a patriotic yatra began in 1942-43 with the rss, is still continuing, and will continue."

L.K. Advani at the BJP National Council meeting in Indore , 2010

Call of the Cabinet

In 1977, Morarji Desai formed the first non-Congress governmentat the Centre when he led a fractious coalition of over-ambitious politicians. His Cabinet grabbed the headlines for the squabbles among its ministers, especially between Desai and his two colleagues-deputy prime minister Chaudhary Charan Singh and Babu Jagjivan Ram. Singh told a journalist casually that "some day Morarji would die and there was nothing wrong in my ambition to succeed him as prime minister". Shanti Bhushan, the law minister in his Cabinet, wrote in his memoirs Courting Destiny, "Morarji immediately asked how Charan Singh could be sure that he would not predecease him. He lowered his voice and almost whispered to me that in fact an astrologer had told him that he was going to lose two of his Cabinet ministers within a year. The two were supposed to be Singh and Jagjivan Ram."

Twenty-one years later, the foreign minister in Desai's Cabinet, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, successfully led a coalition of 13 parties-among them the Shiv Sena, National Conference and DMK-through a full term. There were stories about spats between Vajpayee and his deputy L.K. Advani, but they were best friends in public.

On June 25, 1975, Emergency was declared and thousands of opposition leaders were jailed indefinitely without trial. Many leaders like George Fernandes went underground. Fernandes was implicated in the much-publicised Baroda Dynamite Case, was arrested on June 10, 1976 in Kolkata and brought to trial handcuffed. He became the ultimate anti-establishment hero during the Emergency. The photograph of a chained Fernandes, published in Time and Newsweek, remains the ultimate symbol of the political repression of the period.

1998: NDA Leaders after taking oath

As Defence Minister in the NDA Government from 1998 to 2004, Fernandes made 22 visits to the icy heights of the 6,600-m Siachen glacier in Kashmir, which holds the record of being the world's highest battlefield. He made it a point to visit the glacier every six months to see the induction of new units to guard it. He resigned following a sting operation that exposed kickbacks for an arms deal in 2002. In 2003, however, he was reinstated as defence minister after the Justice Phukan Committee cleared his name.

Hanging on at 33

"After the last Lok Sabha election, a vast majority of the people of this state have given their unmistakable and historic verdict in the state assembly election. In this election, you have given a fitting reply to the terror, repression, corruption and bankrupt economic policies pursued for the last seven years. You have also rejected the divisive forces. An overwhelming majority of the people of West Bengal have indicated their choice forthe programmes of the Left Front and given expression to their desire for a Left government in this state."

Jyoti Basu's message on All India Radio after taking over as the chief minister of West Bengal, on June 22, 1977. The Left is still in power 33 years later.

"A new game has started to pamper the farmers of Singur by some land share with the help of dark forces of repression. And the operator of this 'carrot and stick' policy is today's repressive Left Front Government. The way in which thousands of acres of land are being snatched away by a hybrid Communist chief minister with the help of administration and mafia is illegal and a matter of shame. In a true democratic state such tyrannical rules are dismissed through democratic means."

Mamata Banerjee in Singur and Nandigram and the Untold Story of Capitalised Marxism, a Trinamool Congress publication in 2007

House Disorder

The sixth Lok Sabha in 1977 saw Congress members leaving the treasury benches for the first time after Independence. It also heralded the era of coalition politics, an inevitable reality in today's times. The sixth Lok Sabha was unkind not only to Indira Gandhi, but to women in general. With only 18 women MPs, it recorded the lowest number of women representatives at 3.8 per cent. Contrast that with the 15th Lok Sabha in 2009 which has 59 women MPs, the highest since Independence. Seventeen of them are less than 40. Uttar Pradesh sent the largest number of women (13), an increase of 10 over the sixth Lok Sabha.

The 15th Lok Sabha is also the richest ever with 300 crorepatis. A 150 MPs have criminal cases pending against them, with 73 of them facing serious charges. Clearly, our MPs believe only in the literal meaning of candidate, candidatus in Latin, which means someone dressed in white.

Vote of Times

Yes, it's true. People cast their votes in secret ballot and papers were stored in wooden boxes, which often did not have locks. Yet, tampering was unheard of. Today, wooden boxes have given way to electronic voting machines (EVMs) but doubts have been cast over their accuracy. In the 2009 General Elections, more than 13 lakh evms were used in 8.3 lakh polling stations. evms have hastened the counting of votes, and the results can be declared within two to three hours, compared to between 30 and 40 hours under the ballot-paper system.

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